01
What is the 80/20 rule in business analysis?
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Pareto principle: about 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes, such as most revenue from a few customers or most defects from a few issues.
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02
How do you chart a trend with a target line?
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Create a line or column chart of actuals and add the target as another series formatted as a line.
03
Agile vs Waterfall?
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Waterfall runs fixed phases one after another with requirements frozen early. Agile delivers in short sprints with continuous feedback, so requirements can change. In Agile, BAs maintain the backlog and user stories.
04
What is a BRD review and who signs it off?
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Stakeholders and the sponsor review the Business Requirements Document for completeness and accuracy, and the business owner gives formal sign-off before design begins.
05
How do you compute CAGR in Excel?
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CAGR = (End value / Start value)^(1/years) - 1, entered as =(B2/A2)^(1/n)-1.
06
Build a break-even analysis in Excel.
Show answer
Break-even units = Fixed costs ÷ (Price − Variable cost per unit).
Add a data table to test different price and volume scenarios.
07
What is customer lifetime value?
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The total profit expected from a customer over the relationship, roughly average margin x purchase frequency x lifespan, compared with acquisition cost.
08
How do you build a PivotTable to analyse sales by region and product?
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Create a table, insert a PivotTable, drag region to rows, product to columns, sales to values, and add slicers for month or channel.
09
What are the 4 Ps of marketing?
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Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the levers a business uses to bring an offering to market.
10
How do you write a query to find users active in consecutive months?
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Get distinct user-month pairs, self-join or use LAG on month per user, and keep rows where the previous month is exactly one month earlier.
11
What is a stakeholder and who are the typical stakeholders in a project?
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Anyone affected by or influencing the project: sponsors, product owners, end users, developers, testers, operations and customers.
12
What is a primary key?
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A column or set of columns that uniquely identifies each row in a table and cannot contain NULL.
13
What does GROUP BY do and how is HAVING different from WHERE?
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GROUP BY aggregates rows by column; WHERE filters before grouping and HAVING filters after, using aggregate conditions.
14
What are fixed costs and variable costs?
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Fixed costs stay constant regardless of volume, such as rent; variable costs change with volume, such as raw materials.
15
What are acceptance criteria?
Show answer
Clear, testable conditions a story must meet to be accepted, often written as Given-When-Then scenarios.
16
How do you build a forecast in Excel?
Show answer
Use historical data with FORECAST.ETS or trend lines, state assumptions, compare against actuals and show best, base and worst scenarios.
17
What is the difference between a chart and a dashboard?
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A chart shows one view of data; a dashboard combines several charts and KPIs on one page for monitoring.
18
What is a RACI matrix?
Show answer
A table assigning Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed roles per task so ownership is clear.
19
How would you estimate the market size for an electric scooter in India?
Show answer
Top-down: two-wheeler market x EV share x addressable segment. Bottom-up: target households x adoption rate x price. Compare both for a sanity check.
20
A bank wants to reduce customer churn. What would you do?
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Define churn, analyse who leaves and why, segment customers, find drivers through data and surveys, design retention offers and measure uplift with a control group.
21
How do you handle changing requirements?
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Log the change, assess impact on scope, cost and timeline, get approval through change control or backlog grooming, and update documents and stakeholders.
22
How do you create a dashboard in Excel?
Show answer
Prepare clean data, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, add KPI cards and slicers, and arrange everything on one sheet with a clear layout.
23
What is the role of a BA in Scrum?
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They help the Product Owner refine the backlog, write stories and acceptance criteria, clarify details with developers and support testing and demos.
24
What is the difference between OLTP and OLAP systems?
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OLTP handles many small day-to-day transactions; OLAP supports analysis over large historical data with aggregates and reporting.
25
Guesstimate: how many cups of tea are sold in Delhi per day?
Show answer
Population about 20 million, adult tea drinkers about 50%, cups bought outside per person around 1 on average. This gives roughly 10 million cups, then adjust for offices and stalls.
26
What is a break-even point?
Show answer
The sales volume where total revenue equals total cost. It equals fixed cost divided by contribution margin per unit.
27
How would you prioritise 10 features with a limited budget?
Show answer
Score them with RICE or value-vs-effort, align with goals, consider dependencies and risks, validate with stakeholders, then use MoSCoW for the release plan.
28
What is SQL and why do business analysts need it?
Show answer
A language for querying databases. BAs use it to pull data themselves, validate numbers, check reports and answer questions without waiting for engineers.
29
Revenue grew but profit fell. Why could that happen?
Show answer
Look at the cost side: heavier discounts, higher CAC, logistics costs, product mix shifting to low-margin items, one-time expenses or pricing changes. Break contribution margin down by segment.
30
What is a data table in Excel?
Show answer
A what-if tool that recalculates a formula for different inputs, for example loan payments across different rates and tenures.
31
How do you validate data before analysis?
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Check row counts against the source, nulls, duplicates on keys, value ranges, date coverage and that totals reconcile with finance reports.
32
How would you price a new subscription product?
Show answer
Combine cost-plus, competitor benchmarks and willingness to pay from research, test tiers with experiments and check margin and churn impact.
33
What is a product backlog vs a sprint backlog?
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The product backlog is the ordered list of all desired work; the sprint backlog is the subset the team commits to in the current sprint.
34
How would you forecast next quarter's sales in Excel?
Show answer
Use FORECAST.ETS or a trendline on monthly history, check seasonality, compare with a simple moving average and present a range, not a single number.
35
Tell me about a time you handled a difficult stakeholder.
Show answer
Use STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Show that you listened, found the underlying goal, used data to align people and reached a documented decision.
36
How do you estimate the annual revenue of a coffee shop chain?
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Number of outlets x daily customers x average bill x operating days, then validate using footfall, peak hours and similar chains.
37
How would you analyse the declining sales of a retail store?
Show answer
Break sales into footfall, conversion and average basket, compare with last year and competitors, and check stock, pricing, staffing and local events.
38
What is Agile and how does Scrum work?
Show answer
Agile delivers value in small increments with feedback. Scrum organises work in sprints with planning, daily stand-ups, review and retrospective, led by a Scrum Master and Product Owner.
39
What techniques do you use to elicit requirements?
Show answer
Interviews, workshops, surveys, observation, document analysis, prototyping and brainstorming, chosen according to stakeholders and project stage.
40
How do you manage conflicting requirements from two senior stakeholders?
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Clarify the underlying goals, present data and trade-offs, facilitate a joint session, escalate to the sponsor if needed and document the agreed decision.
41
Which what-if analysis tools does Excel have?
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Goal Seek (find the input for a target output), Data Tables (see outputs for many inputs) and Scenario Manager (save best, base and worst cases).
42
What is the use of the IFERROR function?
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It returns a custom value when a formula errors out, keeping reports clean, for example =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(...), "Not found").
43
What is Power Pivot?
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An Excel add-in for building data models with relationships and DAX measures over millions of rows, beyond normal worksheet limits.
44
Explain Porter's Five Forces.
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A model assessing industry attractiveness through supplier power, buyer power, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes and rivalry among competitors.
45
What is a subquery and when would you use it?
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A query nested inside another, used for filtering or calculating values such as customers whose spend is above the average.
46
How do you prioritise requirements?
Show answer
Use MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't), value versus effort scoring or the Kano model, agreed with stakeholders based on business value and risk.
47
Stakeholders give conflicting requirements. What do you do?
Show answer
Clarify the goal behind each request, map them to business objectives, prioritise with MoSCoW, run a joint session, then document the decision and get sign-off.
48
What are functional and non-functional requirements?
Show answer
Functional requirements describe what the system does (login, reports); non-functional ones describe how well it does it (speed, security, availability, usability).
49
Use case vs user story?
Show answer
A use case describes the full interaction between an actor and the system (main and alternate flows). A user story is a short statement of need from the user's point of view, refined with acceptance criteria.
50
Which Excel functions do business analysts use daily?
Show answer
VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, IF, text functions, PivotTables and charts.
51
A food delivery company's orders fell 15%. How do you investigate?
Show answer
Check data accuracy, then segment by city, restaurant, time and user type; look at supply, delivery time, pricing, competitors and seasonality before proposing fixes.
52
What is a KPI and give examples for an e-commerce business?
Show answer
A measurable value showing progress to a goal, such as conversion rate, average order value, cart abandonment rate and customer retention.
53
Should a food-delivery app launch in a new city?
Show answer
Check market size (population, online ordering share), competition, restaurant supply, unit economics per order, CAC and payback period. Propose a pilot with clear success metrics.
54
How do you find the top 5 customers by revenue?
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SELECT customer_id, SUM(amount) AS revenue FROM orders GROUP BY customer_id ORDER BY revenue DESC LIMIT 5;
55
BRD vs FRD?
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A BRD states what the business needs and why. An FRD details how the system should behave to meet those needs (functional specifications).
56
KPI vs metric?
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Every KPI is a metric, but a KPI is tied directly to a strategic goal (e.g. monthly churn). A metric can be any measurement (e.g. page views).
57
How do you find duplicate customers?
Show answer
SELECT email, COUNT(*) FROM customers GROUP BY email HAVING COUNT(*) > 1;
58
What are wireframes and why are they useful for a BA?
Show answer
Low-fidelity layouts of screens that help stakeholders visualise and agree on requirements before development starts.
59
How do you calculate monthly revenue growth in SQL?
Show answer
Aggregate revenue per month and use LAG(revenue) OVER (ORDER BY month) to compute (revenue - previous) / previous.
60
What is Kano model in prioritisation?
Show answer
A model classifying features as basic, performance or delight attributes based on how they affect customer satisfaction, helping decide what to build first.
61
What is a feasibility study?
Show answer
An early assessment of whether a proposed solution is technically, economically, operationally and legally viable before committing budget.
62
How do you use Excel's Scenario Manager?
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Define named scenarios such as best, base and worst with different input values and compare the outputs in a summary report.
63
How would you improve a company's low app conversion rate?
Show answer
Map the funnel, find the biggest drop-off, check usability and load time, run A/B tests on fixes and track conversion lift.
64
How do you protect a worksheet or workbook?
Show answer
Review > Protect Sheet or Workbook with a password, lock cells, hide formulas and allow only selected cells to be edited.
65
What is a SWOT analysis?
Show answer
A framework listing internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats to assess a project or business position.
66
SQL: total revenue per month.
Show answer
SELECT DATE_TRUNC('month', order_date) AS month, SUM(amount) AS revenue
FROM orders GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;
-- MySQL: DATE_FORMAT(order_date, '%Y-%m')
67
What is a market entry strategy case?
Show answer
Decide whether and how to enter a market by evaluating attractiveness, competition, capabilities and entry mode (build, buy, partner), then risks and next steps.
68
How do you approach a guesstimate question?
Show answer
Clarify the scope, break the problem into logical parts, state assumptions with round numbers, compute step by step and sanity-check the answer.
69
How do you validate that a report's numbers are correct?
Show answer
Reconcile totals with source tables using SQL, check filters and joins for duplication, compare with prior periods and verify with business owners.
70
How would you measure the success of a new feature?
Show answer
Define a goal metric, a baseline and guardrail metrics, run an experiment or before-after comparison and review adoption, retention and revenue impact.
71
What is a KPI tree?
Show answer
It breaks a top metric into drivers: Revenue = Users × Conversion × AOV; Users = New + Returning, and so on. It shows which lever to pull and where a drop came from.
72
Do a quick SWOT analysis for an ed-tech company.
Show answer
Strengths and Weaknesses are internal; Opportunities and Threats are external. Example: S = strong faculty, W = low brand awareness, O = AI upskilling demand, T = free online content.
73
What is scope creep and how do you control it?
Show answer
Uncontrolled growth of requirements. Control it with a clear scope statement, change control process, impact analysis and sponsor approval for additions.
74
What is the profit equation and how do you use it in cases?
Show answer
Profit = Revenue minus Cost, where revenue = price x volume and cost = fixed + variable. Split each part to find which one explains a change.
75
Guesstimate: how many pizzas are sold in Mumbai on a weekend?
Show answer
About 20 million people, roughly 10% order pizza on a weekend, about 1 pizza per 2 people in an order. This gives roughly 1 million pizzas, adjusted for outlets and delivery capacity.